Preparedness - Colorado College

Emergency and Disaster Preparedness

Emergency and disaster preparedness is a shared responsibility.  Colorado College expects faculty, staff, students and guests to take steps on their own to prepare for these events.  General preparedness guidelines may not apply in every emergency; Colorado College expects faculty, staff, students and guests to integrate their own preparedness activities with the circumstances of the emergency.

• Be positive and realistic during emergencies
• Recognize that you will be on your own for the first few minutes or hours of an emergency
• Realize that your actions can, and will, make a difference
• Try to do the most good for the most people during any emergency

People at Colorado College should prepare at the personal level, and to be able to react to emergency events, such as building emergencies.  People with disabilities have special needs and may require additional preparation.

How We Have Prepared for and Would Respond to a Random Act of Violence

The tragic events on the campus of Virginia Tech University have shocked and saddened us all.   Random acts of violence such as this are among the most difficult to prepare for across the full spectrum of threats that we and other college and university campuses face.  For every threat we can imagine, emergency management planning involves thoughts about mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery from particular incidents.  Even on a small campus like ours, we have many people distributed in many buildings in an environment that is open, welcoming, and highly accessible by design. This presents a very difficult security challenge for us – there is little we can do to mitigate or defend against a random act of violence in such an environment.  However, we can and do have plans in place to respond to such incidents as described in the following questions and answers.
Read the Frequently Asked Questions

Connect-Ed: A New All-Campus Emergency Messaging System (October 16, 2007)

To all members of the Colorado College community,

I am pleased to announce that we recently purchased a new emergency messaging system for our campus called Connect-ED. You can learn more about it by reading the "Frequently Asked Questions" below. It will allow us to contact all students, faculty and staff quickly via phones (office, cell or both) and e-mail in case of an emergency. Please note that we will ONLY use this system for emergency messages or related tests.

We did a small-scale test of the system last week and are now planning the first campus-wide test for this Thursday, October 18th at 4:10 pm. At that time, we will trigger a test message from me that will be delivered to all of the phone numbers and e-mail addresses that are currently loaded in our emergency contact database. Early next week, we will publish the results of this first test as well as information about how each of you will be able to update the emergency contact information that is used by this new system.

At the same time we test Connect-ED on Thursday, we will ring the Shove Chapel bells with a special alarm sound. During the summer, we programmed this sound so that people within earshot of the bells will know that they should pay attention and should check e-mail or voice mail for an emergency message. We know that not everyone will be able to hear the bells but, because we are a small campus, expect that an emergency message would be spread quickly by those who do receive it.

We are planning several more tests of this emergency messaging system this fall as we improve our emergency contact database and in the future expect to test it approximately once per semester.

Thanks very much for your attention to this important new emergency service at CC.

Richard F. Celeste, President
Read the Frequently Asked Questions